


Give More Hugs Than Atlas Had Shrugs

by APgeeksout



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Affection, Community: hc_bingo, Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Gen, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 08:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16594538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: "Flex is with me," Bayley offered. "Come on, dude. You know you wanna hang out with him.""Aha!" he said, putting more energy into it that he really felt. "You need a dog-sitter! I see how it is.""That," she said cheerfully, "or, I know what kind of bait it takes to lure Seth freaking Rollins. Take your pick. And then come see me."





	Give More Hugs Than Atlas Had Shrugs

**Author's Note:**

> A tag to both the 10/22/18 episode of RAW and Evolution. Blatantly handwaves stuff like geography, house show schedules, and the hassle of traveling with pets for the sake of hugging. Covers the “cuddling” square for my card in Round 9 of Hurt/Comfort Bingo.

Seth slumped forward and rested his forehead against the closed door of an empty locker. The metal surface felt good against his skin, even if it wasn't cool enough to do much to ease the dull ache building behind his eyes in the wake of another Dirty Deeds. He bit his lip and clumsily kicked his half-packed bag across the floor - spilling gear and toiletries and dirty laundry across the tile - and willed himself not to cry. Not again, or at the very least, not here, alone in a clammy locker room somewhere in the emptier half of Kentucky.

Even though his head hurt - his whole body ached, actually, ambush and exertion and lack of sleep all adding up against him; even though Dean still hadn't talked to him - had barely even looked at him; even though his bag was too small to easily hold all three titles - he couldn't bring himself to ditch Dean's half of the Tag Championship: what if Dean came back to him and wanted it? what if he didn't come back and it was the last thing Seth ever got to share with him?; even though the rental waiting for him outside was too big, the spaces his brothers should have filled yawning cold and empty around him; even though it felt like fighting back tears was all he'd accomplished for days, he was not going to cry tonight.

His phone buzzed from somewhere in the wreckage of his bag: a text. He leaned down to fish it out. Probably it wasn't Dean - probably it was Corey again: full of concern Seth appreciated and also questions he couldn't answer - but he had to check. Couldn't stand the thought of missing it if Dean reached out.

This time it was Bayley, with a string of emojis - mostly hearts - and the words _Thinking about you, Dude. Call me if you're not driving_.

She'd given him an easy out - odds were good that anybody in the business was on the road at any given time - he could pretend that he'd already been rolling down 75, that he hadn't seen her message until it was too late to call back. He'd see her Monday, and she wouldn't hold his being anti-social against him.

He took a steady breath and hit the call button. She picked up, and he could hear the bright grin on her face when she greeted him; he felt a feeble smile of his own take shape, her cheer contagious even over the phone and through the cloud that surrounded him.

"You booked anywhere for tomorrow?" she asked.

"Just a couch in front the football. Bears have to win for me after this week, right?" He sank wearily onto the top of a cold concrete bench and dragged his bag closer to start re-stuffing it. "The universe owes me or something." He cringed as soon as the words left his mouth; Bayley would never be the one to say so, but there was always the chance the universe - or Dean - had already been in payback-mode.

"Does it have to be any particular couch?" she asked into his unsettled silence. "Come to Evolution," she continued. "You can watch your game and the show from my hotel room if you're peopled-out, and then we can ride to Raw together?"

"You sure?" he asked. He couldn't imagine she didn't have plans with her girls, or a dozen other people she could be spending her time on. "I don't want to cramp your style."

"You are my style, baby," she said, making her voice deep and goofy. She laughed a little, and he tried to join in so she wouldn't worry; the sound he made probably wasn't all that reassuring. "Flex is with me," Bayley offered. "Come on, dude. You know you wanna hang out with him."

"Aha!" he said, putting more energy into it that he really felt. "You need a dog-sitter! I see how it is."

"That," she said cheerfully, "or, I know what kind of bait it takes to lure Seth freaking Rollins. Take your pick. And then come see me."

"Let me think about it. I'm still finishing up at the arena," he finished lamely.

"Okay," she agreed, and the gentleness in her tone put a fresh lump in his throat. "Same hotel as always when we're in town. I'll have them hold a key for you at the desk. Just in case."

* * *

"Sit stilll!" Sasha said, and turned Bayley's face again with strong fingers under her chin. "I'm not trying to make you look like a clown, but it's gonna happen if you don't stop squirming."

"Sorry, Boss." She laughed and tried to settle in the makeup chair, extending a hand to give Nattie's a squeeze as the Queen of Harts passed by to finish changing into her part of their themed gear. "It just tickles."

She wasn't angled to be able to see it in the mirror, but she trusted Sasha was trying to put something pretty on the side of her face with her little pots of paint and glitter and brushes that felt like butterfly kisses on her skin. And it wasn't exactly a downer to have Sasha standing so close and looking at her so intently through the lenses of her glasses with her bare lips scrunched into the cutest frown of concentration.

"There," Sasha said, after another couple of minutes of careful attention. She stepped behind Bayley's spinny chair and turned her around so that her handiwork was caught in the vanity mirror. "What do you think?"

Sasha had given her wings of blue and pink, fanning out from the corner of her eye, over her temple, and disappearing into her hairline, and a raspberry-colored heart at the corner of her cheekbone.

"Very pretty," she said, finding and holding Sasha's gaze in the mirror. "I love it."

Sasha rolled her eyes behind her glasses, and it didn't manage to look nearly as mean and sassy as Bayley was sure she wanted it to. Asuka and Naomi ducked in from the hallway, all smiles and coordinating neon hair, and she felt Sasha give the ends of her ponytail a gentle tug before she slipped off to get herself ready, while they came closer to admire the facepaint and collect some hugs.

Just as they were headed out to make one last assault on catering, Charlotte came in, still in simple workout gear, but with a crown of mermaid braids worked into her hair and a dusting of gold powder shimmering on her face. She said all the right, fierce things when Nattie asked about her match with Becky, but her wan smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Sasha hugged from one side, and motioned for Bayley to come wrap her up from the other, and Charlotte at least looked more convincingly cheerful before left with a harried PA to do some filming with her dad.

“I want a picture!” she announced, and linked her arm through Sasha’s once they had seen Charlotte off.

“I do look pretty good, don’t I?” Sasha said, then laughed, tossing her long, loose curls and crossing eyes made up in sparkling purples and pinks. 

“Even more than always,” she agreed, and reached for her phone, face down on the top of the vanity table amid a rainbow sea of nail polish bottles.

There was a new message from Seth waiting when she unlocked the screen. She was expecting good luck wishes and a reasonable but disappointing excuse for his not coming to see her. Instead, there was a picture: Flex, lolling blissed-out in someone's lap with his feet in the air, his tongue poking out, and a familiar hand ruffling up the fuzz of his exposed belly; in the background, a pair of feet snugged into New Day socks were propped up in front of a TV showing a huddle of football players.

She smiled and showed the screen to Sasha before she switched over to her own camera and pulled her close again for a selfie. She wrapped her free arm around her from behind and tucked her chin over Sasha’s shoulder; pressed cheek-to-cheek, they fit just right in the frame of her camera.

_My two favorite boys!_ , she tapped out in response to Seth, and added a couple of heart emojis for good measure.

She set the new selfie of herself and Sasha all dolled up as her wallpaper, replacing a shot from last week’s MMC, then sent a copy to Sasha’s phone and one to Seth’s.

_My favorite girls_ , he echoed back to her. _Eat ‘em up!_

* * *

It was late - or, actually, early - by the time she rolled her bag back to the door of her room. She wasn't sure Seth would still be up, though she hoped he was. She keyed herself in and blocked the doorway carefully with her body and her luggage, leaving no space for Flex to wriggle through as he bounded toward her, tags jingling.

She pulled the door closed and leaned down to scritch behind his ears as Seth followed him into the entryway, understandably a little less bouncy. She returned his sad smile and stepped in for a hug, wrapping her arms tight around his middle and leaning close against his solid chest, resting her cheek against his shoulder. Even in socks, he was taller: tall enough to wrap her up tight when he wound his arms around her shoulders and buried his face in her hair and sagged into her with a heavy sigh.

"I'm glad you came," she said softly, and gave him an extra squeeze.

"So am I." 

He breathed out another sigh and kept holding her close against him, and Bayley stood in the circle of his arms and rubbed little circles up his spine while Flex wound himself in busy little figure-eights around their feet. Eventually, he straightened up, and she let him open up a little space between them and drift further into the room while she snagged her suitcase and gently shooed Flex on ahead of her.

"Congrats, again. You guys - err, girls - killed it!" he said, and took the handle of her bag from her hand and lifted it onto the top of the low dresser for her. "How are the ribs? Guess I could have asked before I smushed you."

"I've had worse," she said, though she was already sizing up the number of extra pillows on the undisturbed bed, planning to sleep propped-up with them all. 

The light from the room’s only lit lamp, on one end of the nightstand tucked between the beds, was dim enough that it had taken her a while to notice that his soft t-shirt was one from the latest batch of merch, splashed with a Boss & Hug Connection logo. She smiled and covered the illustration of inflatable-tube-person versions of herself and Sasha locked in an embrace with her palm. It was coincidence - but a happy one - that that also meant she was resting a hand over his heart.

“You’re sweet,” she said. “I don’t even have this one yet.”

“You don’t have one of your couples’ shirts, and Sasha’s still speaking to you?” he teased. 

She swatted at his chest, not hard enough to actually sting, and made an exaggerated face of offense. “Excuse you. How do you know she doesn’t prefer me without a shirt?”

He gave a laugh, quiet but real, and stepped away to sit at the foot of the bed. Flex jumped up beside him and nudged at his hand until Seth obediently stroked at his fuzzy white head. “Sorry I’m keeping you from stripping down with her tonight,” he offered. 

“It’s sweet that you think you being here would stop us. You know you’d be invited to the party,” she said, and threw a grin back over her shoulder at him before she returned to sifting through her bag for comfy sleep clothes. “Sasha’s trying to cheer Charlotte up a little tonight,” she added, more seriously. “Her dad means well, probably, but he’s kind of not very good at it.”

“I guess that was a pretty rough match for her - even though they burned the place down tonight - huh?” 

“Would have been even if she’d won, I think,” she said, and laid aside the small bag that held her toothbrush and other bottles and tubes of getting-ready-for-bed stuff. Neither of them said out loud any of the things they knew about how feeling proud and feeling sad never really cancelled each other out in the ring.

* * *

Seth offered to take Flex down for one last walk for the night, and while they were gone, Bayley took some Advil, dressed for bed in pjs printed with cartoon monkeys and a soft almost worn-out NXT sweatshirt, rearranged the pillows to let her sleep at an incline, crawled under the blankets, and settled back with her phone to scroll through the hashtags for Evolution on instagram and Twitter. 

The door opened quietly, and once he was off his leash, Flex zoomed across the room and vaulted himself onto the bed at her side while she heard Seth turning the bolt and throwing the chain to lock them in snug for the night. By the time he came back in sight, he was shaking his hair loose from its sloppy bun, and he’d already kicked off his shoes and traded his jeans for baggy sweats. 

“Hoped you wouldn’t mind sharing,” she said, gesturing to the place waiting for him at her side, where he’d earlier turned back the covers and left his phone charger plugged in in the space next to the bed.

“Never with you,” he said, and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Or with you,” he added, reaching to pet Flex’s head where he’d nestled down to rest it on her knee. He made a satisfied little ruff and thumped the blanket with his stubby tail. 

“Thanks for keeping him company today.”

Seth smiled and shook his head. “No thanks necessary; I’m pretty sure he was better company for me than vice-versa. Lights out?”

“Please.”

He switched off the lamp and crawled beneath the covers by the dull blue light of their phones.

"Becky doesn't really talk to me any more,” she said, and turned her screen so that he could read the defiant words pulled up there, “but at least I can see she's okay enough to Tweet." 

She sent Sasha a line of Xs and Os and double-checked her alarm before she set her phone aside. Beside her, Seth scrolled through his notifications one more time with a quiet sigh, then darkened his screen and the room with it. 

"It's stupid that I keep checking,” he scoffed at himself. “Dean would barely pick up a phone in the best of times; it's not like he's gonna start now."

"It's not stupid to hope," she said, eyes slowly adjusting to the dark as she waited for him to stash his phone on the nightstand and settle.

She still couldn't make out more than the shape of him in the dark, but he turned onto his side, facing her, and one of his hands landed on the comforter at her hip. She reached over and lifted his arm up into her lap, cradling his hand between both of her own. He took it for the invitation it was and curled closer to her.

"I just don't know what else to do," he said, already-quiet voice muffled even more by the pillow scrunched up next to her hip. "I don't know how we get through this, if it's not together."

She laced the fingers of one hand together with his and moved the other over to slide her fingers into his hair, stroking it back from his temple. "Maybe Dean can't be here, for whatever his reasons are," she said, "but you know you're not alone."

He tried to smother the sound that tore out of his throat against the pillow, and she felt his breath shudder in his chest. She squeezed his hand tighter and cradled his head in her hand as best she could, while Flex made a distressed noise of his own and shuffled his sturdy little body across her legs to nuzzle curiously at Seth. 

The broken sound Seth made then was at least partly startled laughter. “Your nose is cold, pal,” he choked out. 

“Means his heart is warm,” she said, and stroked a line down Seth’s face from forehead to jaw.

After a minute, Seth steadied himself, and Flex turned a couple of circles in her lap, snuggled down in the nest he’d made just below their joined hands, and promptly zonked back out. It was a long time before either of the humans joined him.


End file.
